David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

24 August 2017

Two artists, a century ago : a cultural revolution for one - Alexander Rodchenko in Russia - and a rare natural coincidence of revolutions for another - Howard Russell Butler in the United States.Aleksander Rodchenko :

19 August 2017

In last night's SBS re-run of the original Batman TV series, the illusionist Zelda the Great and her clever criminal companion Eivol Ekdol watch through periscopes as Batman and the Boy Wonder enter the Inescapable Doom Trap :

While there, we also regarded (and translated...) The Potter's current exhibition The Score, curated by Jacqueline Doughty :A musical score is a form of translation. It transcribes sound into drawing, by representing the aural complexities of pitch, rhythm and tempo as visual symbols.

The Score expands upon this spirit of transformation to ask, if music can be represented by notes on a staff, why not by colours? If a song can be performed by the voice, why not with silent hand gestures? And how would dance based upon the syllables of a poem, or music based upon the shape of a leaf manifest?

photos by Jodie Hutchinson

excerpts from The Score of Theatre of the Actors of Regard

Now, following The Score, we're listening again to Ken Nordine, to his 1966 Colors album, an extension of his 1964 7" EP Fuller Paint 'Color' Spots made for the Fuller Paint Company.

The ad man Bob Pritkin gave Ken Nordine this opportunity. That's Bob below, on stage with the Fuller Four Paint Performers doing their conceptual Can-Can-Can-Can for TAR. This info and these images from the excellentaudioarcana.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard

COLORS has thirty-four tracks, each around 1' 35" of cool jazz hip bop advertisement copy for the chosen colors. It's available on Spotify and YouTube.

Flesh, as a color is in an awful mess, yesAsk anyone with flesh, they'll tell yaFlesh, as a color is about as close to a problem as a color can getSome people think the only color flesh color should be is the color their flesh color isWhich, pure and simple, is color-centric thinkingPopular in some corners, but you and I know, though, That the proper color flesh for flesh to be is the proper color it isVarying from complexion to complexionBut if black fleshAnd white fleshAnd brown fleshAnd red fleshAnd yellow fleshAnd tan fleshIf all the fleshes that are flesh want to establish a sensible similarity among differences,We better forget the flesh, and the colors it can be, and think on the Spirit, and its singular lightOtherwise, flesh as a color could be black and blue,Or even a bloody hue

13 August 2017

It's the Australian Football League's version of Tomasso Siciliano's 1585 Vatican ceiling fresco The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism,performed each AFL season whenever St Kilda (The Saints) and Melbourne (The Demons) clash at the MCG TAR (Melbourne Cricket Ground Theatre of the Actors of Regard).

If guided by the club colours or jumper designs, the battle might might be between, say...Constructivists v Sheep Dippers(the latter based on an old advertising slogan Red White and Black/The Tri-Benzyl Pack (sic)

10 August 2017

In the first issue of the Russian avant-garde journal Lef, in 1923, the Constructivist theorist Osip Brik wrote a brief article with the title “Into Production!”. Taking Aleksandr Rodchenko as his example, he opens: “Rodchenko was an abstract artist. He has become a constructivist and a production artist. Not just in name, but in practice.” He continues: “Rodchenko knows that you won’t do anything by sitting in your own studio, that you must go into real work, carry your own organizational talent where it is needed – into production.”[1] Brik was one of a group of theoretically-informed, Marxist critics and writers within the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture (or INKhUK) who began promoting the so-called “Productivist” platform of Constructivism in the fall of 1921. Some of the most prominent Constructivist artists, such as Vladimir Tatlin, Karl Ioganson, Varvara Stepanova, Liubov Popova, and of course Rodchenko, attempted in various and significantly different ways to enter into Soviet mass production after the Russian Revolution. Yet if the debates leading to the formulation of Constructivism and Productivism in 1921 had emphasized “laboratory work,” industrial technology and engineering, a great deal of Productivist work ended up being less about technology and the factory, and more about the invention and theorization of new kinds of useful material objects that would transform everyday life under socialism. In this essay, I consider these artists’ different models of “production art,” and suggest that the Productivist idea of the “socialist object,” in particular, might still be relevant to radical cultural production today.

(full article here)This "Into Production!" came to mind yesterday, watching TV of the CEO of the CBA, Ian Narev, defending himself and his bank against allegations of turning a blind eye to the facilitation of money laundering via the CBA direct deposit ATMs.

Featured on the cataLOGOS/HA HA cover of Sotheby's RUSSIAN PICTURES November 2016 auction, Alexander Rodchenko’s Construction No.95 (1919) sold for a record £3.6m with fees, eclipsing its previous auction record of £420,000.

We remember when the new CBA logo by Ken Cato was announced and was much discussed. The 2012 article extract below is fromDesktop :Described as “bold, strong, modern and progressive” in a bank press release, the Commonwealth Bank’s current logo was introduced when the bank enlisted its new identity in September 1991. According to the bank, the design is based on the formation of the Southern Cross constellation with the yellow section linking the five stars of the Southern Cross, and the black portion completing the geometrical shape. Yet, Ken Cato, the designer appointed in 1989 to create this new corporate identity, disagrees: “It doesn’t mean the Southern Cross; it means the Commonwealth Bank,” he says. “We needed a shape that could still include the colours yellow and black (as this distinguished us from all of the other banks’ colours) and it had to be a memorable shape in contrast to the bank’s competition and a diamond seemed like a good idea, plus it breaks up the black and yellow colours,” Cato adds.

According to the Commonwealth Bank, the current logo shape is based on the Southern Cross constellation

The story behind the development of the trademark’s single, extended character, double M typeface is also surprising. “It simply came down to having very uncomfortable words placed together,” says Cato. “It was a very long word followed up by a descriptor word like ‘bank’ and I needed to make the word ‘Commonwealth’ as short as I could. There was also a picket fence in the word where the double ‘M’ forms an awkward arch, so these were the decisions behind the joining of the letters and the legibility was not lost – only a designer would pick it up.”

While the Commonwealth Bank declined to comment on the controversial price of the revamp, Cato says he has to smile when people bring up the so-called $11 million redesign budget. “In today’s world, that figure is considerably small when it comes to the branding of big corporations, which have to replace all of their building signage and stationery – it’s almost laughable as it was done incredibly cheaply.”

aside : Ian Narev's current wage package is around $10million/year. Yesterday, the CBA announced it's annual financial result, a profit of around $10billion. Dating from 2012, there are an alleged 54,000 CBA breaches of Australia's money-laundering laws for which the CBA faces a potential $1trillion in fines. Previously, the CBA overcharged its customers by more than $100million and... and...Banks Inquiry, anyone?

... It is not that it is art-historically calculating in any sense, or even somehow self-prophesying, but rather that the real interest it possesses is to serve as evidence of a particular time and place. It serves as the marker of a "scene" – Brisbane in the early 1980s, Melbourne throughout the rest of that decade and into the '90s – and the same could be said of the artists who followed him also in the show: Stephen Bram, Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Melinda Harper, Kerrie Poliness and Gary Wilson. There's virtually nothing to look at in their work, almost nothing of visual interest, except for the fact that it points to a certain kind of artistic activity.

In other words, the principal – if not only – significance of the work is socio-historical, or in more up to date language relational. The work – unlike the original Russian Constructivism – does not point somewhere else but only tautologically to itself and its own existence.

So that in many ways the show is not any kind of exploration of what happened to Constructivism when it arrived in Australia, but merely demonstrates the fact that there were artists here who made work in its name. The result is not any kind of art history but more a social history. Or that, at least, is how it appears once the 1970s begins.

06 August 2017

Young and old at bLOGOS/HA HA have been enjoying the Friday evening re-screenings of the 1960s Batman television series on SBS Viceland.The most recent, episode six - Batman Is Riled, featured our favourite supervillain The Joker played by Cesar Romero. Cesar Romero as The Joker : "HA HA! Look, I've been framed!"

detail

A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA

Holy Headline #1 :

The responsibility of the press

Robin: All the same! "The Joker is wild!" "Batman and Robin foiled again!" Holy Headlines, do we look like page one dumbbells!

Batman: Too true, Robin. The responsibility of the press is to report the truth, despite what it might do to our public image. Our main concern is to a frightened public, whom we seem to be failing.

Robin: Gosh, you're right. I can't help thinking of only myself. I'm sorry.

Batman: Well, that's okay, chum. We all have the right to be selfish sometimes.

Holy Headline #2 :

Holy grammar!

Joker: Batman and Boy Wonder? Are your blindfolds in place? Very well, then. Ask yourselves, "What is wrong with this sentence?" "He who laughs last laughs good!" [laughs]

[Batman turns off the television.]

Robin: Holy grammar! Is that all?

Batman: He who laughs last laughs best, not good! Best! Best! Best!

Robin: Do you suppose "blindfold" might have something to do with it?

Alfred: If I may venture an opinion, sir, I think Master Dick may have put his finger on it.

Batman: Blindfold?

Alfred: No, sir. Grammar. The sentence was gramatically incorrect. One does not laugh good, sir. One laughs well.

But, I was part of that huge crowd on the National Mall in 2009 for
President Obama’s first inauguration. And before the proceedings began in
January 2009, I looked up to see a bald eagle, Americas’s national symbol,
soaring and swooping over the Capitol dome. And I found this quite affecting, I’m
a romantic by nature, and I turned to the stranger sitting next to me and I pointed
this out to her.

But she turned out to be a very conservative Republican,
and she said to me, “That’s no heavenly sign, that’s a trained eagle that the
Obama campaign has put up in the sky to attract positive media attention.

Now, at the time, I found this world view merely
disappointing. In retrospect, I see it as pretty disturbing. It was an early
case of a new more dangerous strain of partisanship in which Americans are
willing to ignore reality if it does not fit with their prejudices.